


seventh day done

by Anonymous



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Healing, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Little bit of graphic injuries, M/M, Mutual Pining, Whump, also pretty graphic reliance on biblical canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 21:10:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It’s four days after the Third Day (capitalized now, as it will be in history, Crowley knows) that Hastur and Ligur appear in the fields outside the house.  They stalk toward him and hell, it’s been ages since he’s gotten a visit in person, this has to be about the Rising.. . . bad stuff happens to Crowley





	seventh day done

**Author's Note:**

> halfway thru writing this i remembered that technically crowley is female during this canon. my explanation is that he switched back after the resurrection idk
> 
> yes this relies heavily on biblical imagery and stuff. 
> 
> red, u flash bastard, if you're reading this, i apologize

It’s four days after the Third Day (capitalized now, as it will be in history, Crowley knows) that Hastur and Ligur appear in the fields outside the house. He’d just been staying there for the thirty-three years the Son of Man spent on this earth, not long enough, in Crowley’s opinion, to call it  _ his  _ house. They stalk toward him and hell, it’s been ages since he’s gotten a visit in person, this  _ has  _ to be about the Rising.

“Hey guys,” he says, cautiously stepping back from the door as the two push it open and enter, eyes pointed at him with unnerving intensity.

“You failed, Crowley,” says Hastur, rounding on him as Ligur cuts off his exit. “Spectacularly. Impressively. You failed in a way we didn’t even  _ expect  _ you to fail, how remarkable is that?”

“I  _ truly _ don’t know what you’re talking about.” He does. Hell below, he does, and he can only hope that despite this massive, horrific setback to Hell’s plans, Crowley’s place on Earth is too important to risk destroying him over.

Ligur snarls, real hate emanating from his eyes. “Let me  _ spell it out for you.  _ We had  _ Him. . .  _ we had Him  _ dead.  _ Gone. Not a threat, after  _ years  _ of tempting and whispering to those funny Pharisees and that disciple. All  _ you  _ had to do was make sure He  _ stayed dead.” _

“Not-- ehm, not much I could do about it, if that was the Great Plan, eh?” Crowley says, backing up a bit. “What’d you expect me to do, fight Him as He came out of the grave?”

“Regardless,” Hastur says, “you were the representative on Earth, the closest to the incident, and our lord Satan needs someone to blame.”

_ Fuck.  _ Crowley clenches his hands, tensing. He has no backup plan for this, no way to get out-- if only he’d anticipated something like this happening, but he’d been sure that there was no way, no possible way, that any of the forces of Hell would even have time to deal with  _ him  _ once the new Christ-followers started spreading their good deeds everywhere. 

Hastur steps forward swiftly, grabs Crowley’s head, and holds it still, slimy fingers gripping his hair. “Don’t struggle, and this will go easier.”

Crowley struggles as Ligur slams the door and approaches.  _ “What  _ will?” He hisses instinctively as Ligur gets closer, and feels his fangs creeping in through his growing fear. “ _ What  _ will go easier?”

“Don’t worry, we’re not going to destroy you,” Hastur purrs, and slams Crowley to his knees with sudden strength, holding his head down. “Unless you fight back, of course.”

No way out, then. 

“What are you going to do,” he grits out.

“Rote punishment,” Ligur says, grinning. “Take some inspiration from the Romans, I think.”

“Ah, lovely folks, the Romans,” Hastur adds. “Came up with some of the most inventive ways to kill people.”

Crowley, bracing his hands against the floor as Hastur keeps a firm grip on his neck and hair, grits his teeth. So he’s to be punished, then. Not a surprise, or a new occurrence, but he hates that it’s coming from Hastur and Ligur, and he hates that he probably deserves it, even if it’s not in the way Hastur and Ligur think he does. Hadn’t he been just a tiny bit glad when the death turned out to be impermanent? He’d liked Jesus-- not so much Christ, God Incarnate, Fully God and Fully Human, but that was just part of the job. 

But back to the matter at hand.

Hastur rips away the top half of his tunic, and Hell, Crowley knows what they want to do now. At least it won’t discorporate him entirely. It  _ won’t,  _ he’s strong, he can survive a few lashes. He  _ can. _

“Romans,” Hastur says, almost reverently. 

“Romans,” Ligur agrees, and the whip-- sharp bits of rock and nail threaded to the ends-- lands on Crowley’s back with a  _ squelch. _

The scream that follows, when it’s ripped out, is the first of many.

  
  


Crowley, used to hanging onto life by threads, does his best to cling to it again as he lies on his floor, bleeding out. His body-- uncomfortably human, inconveniently mortal-- has been torn apart, skin and layers of muscle flayed away until there was nothing left but the sticky shapes of internal organs and the curling, flexing shape of spine where his back had been. Even they were failing, and the blood-- damn the blood, it flowed too quickly, he was left cold too quickly-- the blood pooled around him, spreading and spreading until he feels his face coated in it, his lips drinking it in unconsciously.

Like wine, he thinks.

Blood, wine. Bread, body. Broken and shared and given away. Crowley wasn’t so generous-- he begrudges every drop that flows from split veins and damaged arteries, hated the release of every piece of flesh the whip had stolen from him. 

It fit, that it had been the whip. Crowley’d half expected to be hauled up and crucified, but perhaps that wouldn’t have been as much fun. 

He groans. This might do him in, he realizes, the blood loss at least. No healing powers, not anymore. And how would it be, coming Down There to say “Yes, I was discorporated because the punishment for my (apparent) failure was too harsh, please may I have another body?” No, he’d never be sent back up here. 

He’s scared of dying. It’s an odd realization, but perhaps even demons can fear the inevitability of death, of the turning out of the light. The slow fade gets to everyone, especially when you can feel it coming. Crowley presses his face to the puddle of blood beneath him and hisses out a shaky breath.

Then he hears it.

“Crawly-- dear. You changed it, didn’t you-- yes,  _ Crowley, _ are you there?”

_ Aziraphale.  _ Crowley wants to call out and let the angel-- his friend, he hopes, he can’t stop hoping that Aziraphale will also think of him as a friend-- let Aziraphale know he’s here. But he can’t gather enough breath into his lungs to say the beginning of his angel’s name.

“I’m dreadfully sorry to come in without-- well, I-- Crowley, are you  _ in  _ here? I can sense you, and I’m sorry but I’ve  _ got  _ to tell you something rather important--”

_ Angel _ , Crowley thinks, his mind blurring and his eyes darkening. He could always see in the dark, but this is a different kind of darkness. He can only hope Aziraphale finds him soon, because he’s trying hard to stay alive now and it would be a shame if he succumbed to death after all that effort.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale says again, sounding rather desperate this time. “Crowley,  _ please,  _ I know you were upset about the Crucifixion but you have to have heard what happened, and they’re coming for you! Yours, they’re planning on-- oh.”

Crowley takes in a shuddering breath, the most he’s managed for hours, and hisses out, “Azir. . .”

“Oh my God,” Aziraphale says, and in his mouth the words are not a curse but a plea, a cry of shock. Crowley can barely see robed knees hit the floor by his body, the fabric soaking in his blood as Aziraphale scrambles to his side, hands dithering over Crowley’s ruined body. The clothes, Aziraphale had always liked the clothes. He’d gotten them stained for Crowley. 

“Crowley, you’re--” Aziraphale says, his voice choked. “I’m. . . I’m so sorry, I didn’t get here soon enough. . .”

Crowley can barely manage a wheeze as his eyes darken irreversibly. He can only hope Aziraphale will remember himself before Crowley’s soul is gone entirely from this body.

He drifts.

Crowley looks rather nice, sleeping, Aziraphale thinks. 

It took a lot out of one, being tortured, dying, and undergoing a massive healing in less than a day. Crowley likely wouldn’t wake for hours. 

Aziraphale really should leave.

He shifts guiltily in his seat.

Crowley was healed, and he probably wouldn’t be visited again by whoever had done this to him. How he’d survived until Aziraphale had found him. . . it was simply will to live, he assumes, and Crowley’s was strong. It was a relief.

Aziraphale doesn’t care to think about why it was a relief.

Shredded skin, hanging peeled over the sides of glistening ribs, had disappeared as the muscle beneath it twisted together again, knitting with unnatural speed into smoothness. Beneath it, organs swelled whole again, replenished themselves and ballooned their wet, glistening way into their places once more. And the skin-- the swell and dip of Crowley’s back, Aziraphale had taken the most care with it, brushing his fingers delicately over it slowly, again and again, even after it was healed. 

No, he won’t leave. Not until Crowley’d awakened, at least. Right now, his eyelids are twitching gently over eyes that look deceptively normal in sleep, and his hair, long and curled again-- Aziraphale had taken the time to heal that, too, after how short it’d been ripped to-- and he’s breathing, slow and deep. It’s a Crowley he doesn’t often get to see, when they meet each other at these strange times. The Crowley he sees then wears his demon identity like a suit of armor, flashing his eyes and dressing in black, always. This Crowley is softer, in his defenselessness. In his sleep. 

Funny thing to do, sleep. Aziraphale has never tried it himself.

He shakes his head and settles back to a more comfortable position, closing his eyes briefly to bring back the memory of a tale he’d been told not two weeks since. He’ll stay here, for Crowley.

After all, who knew what he’d do when he woke up. Almost dying was a nasty experience, sure to be absolutely full of trauma. 

Crowley wakes up gasping, sucking air into lungs that didn’t have the scratching feel of a possible puncture. He surges out of his bed-- oh, he was in a bed, that was nice-- and into a wobbly sort of standing position. He remembers the whip, and he remembers Hastur and Ligur-- he just doesn’t know what to expect right now. 

. . .  _ Oh. _ He’s healed, he realizes.

Then, the voice once more.

“Crowley,  _ please.” _

Crowley just stares at Aziraphale, astonished, as the angel guides him back down to a sitting position, exasperation clear on his face.  _ Aziraphale.  _ So he hadn’t dreamed it, and it hadn’t been some death-wish fever dream his pining mind had conjured up as he bled out onto the floor. No, Aziraphale was here. 

_ Aziraphale  _ was  _ here. _

Crowley nearly falls forward, faster than he can think, and clings to Aziraphale, choking on his relief and the memory of-- everything. He doesn’t have time for frivolous things like propriety, or remembering which side he was supposed to be on. At the moment, Aziraphale is a bit of a Heaven Crowley hadn’t seen for thousands of years, hadn’t touched. 

Aziraphale is  _ Aziraphale,  _ and that is Heaven enough in itself.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, and bursts into tears.

He isn’t aware of what Aziraphale does immediately after, or how long the crying claims him, but when he does come back to himself the angel is stroking at his hair and holding his body close. Crowley shudders, sniffs briefly, and returns to himself. He knows he’ll have to push Aziraphale away soon, this is-- this isn’t allowed, not at all. But he doesn’t  _ want  _ to.

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale says quietly, as if reading his mind. “Really.”

Crowley doesn’t speak.

“You’re healed,” the angel continues, “but I want to know, Crowley, if you’re  _ all right.” _

There’s a pause, and Crowley shakes his head, burying his face deeper into the fabric of Aziraphale’s robe.

“That’s okay.” Aziraphale, so often abhorrent of Heaven and Hell’s language anachronisms, utilizes one as he pets Crowley’s hair. “Just relax.”

And Crowley does, closing his eyes and pretending-- not  _ wishing,  _ not ever, he knows better-- that he and Aziraphale were simply hugging, devoid of any obligation to either side. He pretends, in the awful deception of peace, that he really could relax. That he didn’t have to worry, eventually, about Aziraphale leaving and Hell returning, about having to prove himself again so that he could stay on Earth. 

He could pretend, for just a moment, that he was safe.

**Author's Note:**

> just realized i missed a GOLDEN opportunity to have Crowley say 'i'm always all right.' ah well hindsight is 20/20 the moral here is to not post things immediately to receive validation


End file.
